About VAT on Digital Products and Services
Hertis Services Ltd is obliged, in accordance with applicable law, to charge Value Added Tax (VAT) on sales of digital products and services to customers within the European Union (EU).
The VAT rate applied to these products and services is based on the location of the customer.
This includes but is not limited to the following:
eBooks (pdf downloads)
Calculation Spreadsheets (Excel downloads)
The table below reflects the VAT rates charged on digital content supplied to EU-based customers. VAT rates are charged in accordance with the local legislation of each country:
About VAT for UK Customers
Customers from the United Kingdom currently are not charged any VAT.
- Some of our products are exempt from VAT in the UK, such as the odds calculation course book:
Books (textbooks) with professional, scientific, and educational content as well as educational material (including distance teaching and associated materials) are VAT exempt - All other services and products would normally be vatable at the standard rate, but Hertis Services Ltd is below the UK VAT threshold.
However, we are required to charge and account for VAT in respect of our EU cross-border business-to-customer (B2C) supplies, but we do not have to charge and account for VAT on our UK domestic sales.
How EU VAT Collection Works
As of January 1st, 2015, EU VAT is applied according to the rate of the buyer’s location. Our digital goods service provider (GetDPD) collects the buyer’s address and computes the VAT based on the buyer’s location. Current rates are displayed in the table above.
VAT Rule Compliance
In order to comply with the EU law we are required to identify the location of our customers and collect evidence.
DPD therefore collects the shipping address and IP address and stores them with the transaction details in GetDPD. This meets VAT location identification requirements.
VAT Reverse Charges
If the buyer is a business, and enters a valid VAT Identification Number, the VAT rate will be discounted to 0% and a note added to the invoice stating that reverse charges have been applied to the purchase.
Validate VAT numbers for Business-to-Business (B2B) Transactions
GetDPD verifies that VAT IDs are valid using VIES when they are entered in the checkout process.
Non-EU Purchases
Non-EU purchases will not be charged VAT.
Why We Display Prices “ex VAT”
Each EU country has a different tax rate, and as seen in the table above there are myriad exceptions too.
Soccerwidow is aware that prices to private customers should be shown including VAT. We are aware that we should not specify net prices and then write “plus VAT”.
Unfortunately, this is a task that is impossible to implement technically. It is not only a practical problem which requires substantial programming, but also to display different prices would mean to base the dynamic prices on the IP address or language settings of the browser. Unfortunately, these are not reliable indicators of the true origin of the customer.
In addition, we have a good amount of customers outside the EU, and most of our products are VAT exempt in the UK anyway (Soccerwidow’s country of business). We have therefore decided to display prices applicable to UK customers, but to be compliant with the EU legislation, to charge VAT to customers from all other EU countries but the UK.
All EU clients will see their applicable VAT at the checkout and always have the option to abort the checkout process without any commitment to purchase.
Last Update: 27.01.2017
